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  • 1 day ago
Sanjay Raval, the former owner of the City Wall wine bar in Rochester, told us more about his overnight fundraising Sleep Out event.

It's expected to take place on Saturday 16th August and aims to raise awareness and vital funds for local young people facing homelessness.
Transcript
00:00So Sanjay thank you so much for joining us today but can you tell us a little bit
00:03why are you doing this right now? It all started with a railway trip to London to
00:08be fair so at Rochester stations I saw a stand for Centrepoint the charity that
00:14looks after youth homelessness and just intrigued me how many homeless kids
00:20there are out there and what it's all about and what they were doing. I see and
00:24what will the kind of, what will the night look like? What will you guys be
00:27doing? Will you be sleeping out the entire night? We plan to I mean I'm not sure how
00:31it's going to work out but yeah we plan to lay on cardboard boxes and sleeping
00:34bags just to feel you know the extreme extremities of what they go through. And
00:41you own the city wall in Rochester and you work there? That's correct yes. Do you see
00:46a lot of youth homelessness around the area? Not in Rochester so much I mean the
00:50local authorities have done a massive job to tidy things up and find homes for all
00:55the various homeless people that we did have in Rochester and Rochester is a lot
00:59better and they still get a few but it's a lot better than it's ever been but this
01:03isn't just about Rochester it's been about bringing awareness and it's a
01:06publicity stunt so simple as that to bring awareness to kids across the whole
01:11country because I think Centrepoint from 2023 to 24 claimed there was 118,000
01:20youth from 16 to 25 that were either homeless or very on the verge of it which
01:25is a big number. And on that note how can the local community get involved? It's the
01:3016th of August 11 p.m. through to 9 a.m. Monday morning if you want to come and
01:36sleep rough and join us you're more than welcome to but we're not treating it as a
01:40party it's not mean there's no music there's no alcohol we have to be wary of the
01:44residents we've got in Rochester so we're not trying to disturb anyone we just want
01:48to create a silent publicity event and there won't be alcohol because sadly it's
01:53an alcohol control zone
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